Latest News

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• India’s Reserve Bank hikes key rates to tame inflation
• Return to Delhi, Chidambaram tells Sushma,Jaitley
• Omar happy with centre’s backing on BJP march
• Beware of attack tool kits from malicious websites: Symantec
• Mobile phone firms go all out to woo other’s customers
• Vice president greets nation on Republic Day
• Rajesh Talwar injured after attack outside court
• Respect orders of Kashmir government, Chidambaram tells BJP
• Playing 40 was the toughest: Priyanka Chopra
• Kate Hudson’s family hoping for daughter

India’s Reserve Bank hikes key rates to tame inflation Posted: 24 Jan 2011 11:00 PM PST In a bid to tame prices that has seen annual food inflation soar to double digits, India’s central bank Tuesday hiked its short-term lending and borrowing rates by 25 basis points that could make commercial, housing and auto loans dearer. Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Duvvuri Subbarao hiked the repurchase or repo rate to 6.5 percent from 6.25 percent and reverse repo rate to 5.5 percent from 5.25 percent. Other rates like cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio remained unaltered. The key policy rates were tinkered for the seventh time since January last year as part of the third-quarterly review of the central bank’s monetary policy by the governor at the headquarters on Mint Road in downtowm Mumbai. The repo rate, often referred to as the short term lending rate, is the interest charged by the central bank on borrowings by commercial banks. A hike in the rates makes cost of borrowing costlier for the commercial banks. The reverse repo rate, referred to as the short term borrowing rate, is the rate at which the central bank borrows money from commercial banks. A hike in this rate makes it more lucrative for banks to park funds with the RBI. The cash reserve ratio and statutory liquidity ratio determines the amounts banks have to retain in liquid assets, gold and government bonds against deposits, and form a part of traditional instruments that help in checking liquidity in the system. The central bank also revised upward its inflation forecast sharply to 7 percent by the end of this fiscal, from 5.5 percent earlier, while the projection on growth has been retained at 8.5 percent with an upward bias. “There have been some transitory supply shocks as reflected in the sharp increase in vegetable prices. In addition, petroleum and aviation turbine fuel prices were raised in January which will add 9 basis points to wholesale price inflation,” Subbarao said. “With the risks to growth in 2010-11 being mainly on the upside, the baseline projection of real gross domestic product (GDP) growth is retained at 8.5 percent as set out in the second quarter review of monetary policy of July 2010, but with an upside bias.” The governor said that the policy actions Tuesday will rein in the rising inflationary expectations, which may aggravate due to transitory nature of food prices, but yet be moderate enough not to disrupt growth. The central bank also warned the federal government on its fiscal stand. “Any slippage in the fiscal consolidation process at this stage may render the process of inflation management even harder,” the bank said. The RBI acted with sharp measures mainly to tame prices, which has seen India’s annual food inflation shoot up to a 52-week high of 18.32 percent for the week ended Dec 25, before falling slightly to 15.52 percent for the week ended Jan 8. Loans for automobiles, homes and corporate sector could go up as banks will look to pass on the interest burden to consumers. Leading bankers have already forecast a hike in the lending rates in the near term, taking into account a hike in key rates. Adopting an aggressive monetary policy stand since January last year, the Reserve Bank has hiked the interest rate six times till December, with the short-term lending rates going up 150 basis points and short-term borrowing rates dearer by 200 basis points. Industry, which saw its factory output dip to an 18-month low in November, was already worried since the annual wholesale price inflation in non-food articles that primarily reflects the cost of raw materials was ruling at 23.07 percent for week ended Jan 8.

Return to Delhi, Chidambaram tells Sushma,Jaitley Posted: 24 Jan 2011 10:57 PM PST Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram Tuesday asked Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley to respect the orders of the Jammu and Kashmir government and call off their planned flag-hoisting in Srinagar by giving up the “path of confrontation”. “I would request the two leaders of the opposition and their colleagues to give up the path of confrontation, return to Delhi and join the celebrations in Delhi on Republic Day,” Chidambaram said in a statement issued here. “There is no justification whatsoever to push a political agenda that will certainly affect peace and law and order in the state of Jammu and Kashmir,” Chidambaram added. Swaraj and Jaitley – leaders of the opposition in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha respectively – were detained when they arrived in Jammu airport Monday evening. The BJP has planned a ‘tiranga yatra’ on Republic Day Wednesday to hoist the national flag in Srinagar’s city centre Lal Chowk. The two leaders, along with Ananth Kumar, were taken into police custody in Jammu Monday night to thwart their plans and taken to Madhopur in Punjab where they were freed. The Jammu and Kashmir government has said it would not allow the flag hoisting by any political group in Srinagar. Chidambaram said in his statement: “Yesterday (Monday) I spoke to Arun Jaitley and (Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister) Omar Abdullah.” “I told Jaitley that he and his colleagues had made their point and that they should not defy the orders of the state government, which was the best judge to decide whether there was a threat to law and order and public peace.” The home minister said the BJP leaders were also offered an opportunity to address a press conference at Jammu airport and thereafter, leave the state. “Regrettably, they turned down the offer,” Chidambaram added. “In the circumstances, the state government had to remove the BJP leaders and take them to Madhopur in Punjab. They were lodged for the night at the Rest House in Madhopur,” he said. “The Government of Jammu & Kashmir has made it clear that it would not allow any yatra to Srinagar; nor would it allow any assembly at Lal Chowk (city centre of Srinagar,” the statement said. The state government, he added, had also made it clear that it would not allow the BJP leaders to cross the bridge connecting Madhopur and Lakhanpur and enter Jammu and Kashmir. Stating that it “would be most unfortunate if the BJP leaders defy the restrictions placed by the state government or deliberately cause a breach of the peace”, Chidambaram said the “BJP leaders should respect the orders passed by the state government”. He drew the BJP leaders’ attention to a statement of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Jan 22 and said: “Republic Day is a day of celebration and is not an occasion for divisive politics.”

Omar happy with centre’s backing on BJP march Posted: 24 Jan 2011 10:54 PM PST Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah is elated with the central government’s unqualified support in stopping the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) march to Srinagar and the treatment meted out to three top party leaders, sources say. “The chief minister is happy with the centre’s support. Almost every one is speaking in his favour and he is rightly delighted,” a source in the government who has been interacting with him told IANS on condition of anonymity. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram Tuesday came out openly in support of the Kashmir government’s action against BJP leaders Arun Jaitley, Sushma Sawraj and Ananth Kumar who were sent back from Jammu to Punjab Monday night. The BJP has planned a ‘tiranga yatra’ on Republic Day Wednesday to hoist the national flag in Srinagar’s city centre Lal Chowk. The government has vowed to stop it saying it will stoke law and order problems in the valley. The three BJP leaders were taken into police custody to thwart the party’s plans. “The order of the Jammu and Kashmir government should be respected,” Chidambaram said in a statement, adding that there was no justification for any step that would disturb peace in the state. Sources said two things have elated the chief minister. First, the centre’s support to him and his actions against the BJP, which had become his bête noire during the summer unrest in Kashmir and demanded his dismissal and imposition of governor’s rule. Second, the positive effect he believes the decision will have in the Muslim-dominated Valley. Omar Abdullah had tried to win support in the Valley Oct 6 last year, when he spoke of the dispute over the nature of accession of Jammu and Kashmir with India. His speech had come after his National Conference was losing face in Kashmir, especially after police killed 18 people on a single day Sep 13 during clashes with stone-pelting protestors.

Beware of attack tool kits from malicious websites: Symantec Posted: 24 Jan 2011 10:12 PM PST The latest threat to internet users from hackers is tool kits from malicious websites that attack computers with software programmes, says global security solutions provider Symantec Corporation. Its global intelligence network has detected 240,000 attack tool kits across 200 countries. “Attack tool kits are software programmes that infect networked computers when unsuspecting users surf malicious websites created by cyber criminals,” Symantec India vice-president Shantanu Ghosh told IANS here, citing a Symantec study. The ease with which tool kits are accessible has drawn even traditional criminals without expertise into cybercrime, fuelling a self-sustaining, profitable and organised global economy, the study by the US-based company’s security technology and response unit pointed out. “A techie who develops the kit customises the publicly available exploit code and incorporates it into the kit for setting up a malicious website, which attacks computers when viewed,” Ghosh explained. The Symantec global intelligence network, which identifies cyber threats, takes action and prevents impact, detected 240,000 attack tool kits across 200 countries worldwide in a recent survey. “As cyber attacks have become more profitable, tool kits have become popular with newer versions. These kits are sold on a subscription-based model with updates and support services,” Ghosh noted. For instance, the most prevalent kit codenamed Zeus poses a serious threat to users as it steals bank account details in the absence of safeguards. US cyber sleuths arrested a dozen cyber criminals in September 2010 for stealing about $70 million from online banking and trading accounts using a Zeus botnet. “The speed at which new vulnerabilities and their exploits spread across the world has increased due to smart developers integrating the attack kits with products,” Ghosh observed. Tool kits account for about 60 percent of all threat activity on malicious websites and the attacks are set to go up as kits become robust and easier to use. A single attack kit installed on a popular website can exploit a large number of users in a short time and proliferate rapidly to facilitate more page views, the study found. “If hackers had to create threats from scratch in the past, attack tool kits have made it easy for even a malicious novice to launch a cyber attack,” Ghosh said. The study revealed that a whopping 310,000 unique domains (websites) were malicious, resulting in about 4.4 million malicious pages per month. The other prevalent attack kits are MPack, Neosploit, Nukesploit P4ck and Phoenix. They attack the computers when unsuspecting viewers visit adult entertainment websites, which accounted for 44 percent of the search terms. Accounting for 65 percent of advertised toolkits, Zeus was used to harvest 60 gigabytes (GB) of data from 55,000 compromised computers in August 2010. Cyber criminals used the Zeus kit to steal $1 million from British accounts and $3 million from US bank accounts, the report highlighted. “The remedy is to ensure all software is up-to-date with vendor patches. Asset and patch management solutions help to ensure systems are compliant by using anti-virus and intrusion prevention systems,” the study suggested. Admitting that cyber crime had emerged as a big business worldwide, Ghosh averred that the exponential growth of malicious codes clearly indicate that attackers were sophisticated and organised to optimise resources. The unknown software developer profits by selling the tool kits and their users make money by stealing vital information online. “Attack kits allow hackers to enter the market with sophisticated tools and easy to use icon-driven GUIs that include checkboxes and pull down menus,” Ghosh added.

Mobile phone firms go all out to woo other’s customers Posted: 24 Jan 2011 10:08 PM PST Telcom firms have launched a major advertising, marketing and promotional blitz to attract new and existing customers after the government launched a pan-India scheme that allows them to switch operators while retaining the numbers. Although mobile number portability may not be a big game changer for the industry, it is certainly proving to be a boon for customers giving them the freedom to shift networks, as companies are not just improving their service but also throwing in freebies. State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), for example, has waived the porting charges and is offering a SIM card free of cost along with an additional talk value of Rs.100 for pre-paid customers who switch to their service from other operators. Post-paid customers moving to BSNL will get 50 percent rebate on their first bill. Idea Cellular, the first telcom operator which started campaigning for the service, has not announced any special offers for the customers, but it is making its presence with its round the clock “No Idea, Get Idea” campaigns. “We have not launched any special tariff; however, our focus is to provide good network and customer services. We are confident that the large number of customers who want better network will switch to Idea,” said Rajat Mukarji corporate affairs officer Idea Cellular. However, the industry biggie, Bharti Airtel, has not gone full throttle on promotional campaigns. The company is restricting itself to a few offers like the “Airtel surprise” for customers who switch to its network free talktime, special call rates and free SMS. Unlike Idea Cellular’s campaigns citing negativities of the other networks, Airtel has taken a much softer approach with the punch line which says, “Move to Airtel. Bring your old number along.” Vodafone, known for its distinct advertising campaigns, too is not as aggressive as Idea. Its “everybody’s welcome” television commercials are cute and feature the face of its promotional activities — a pug. One of the biggest players in the industry, Reliance Communications has also launched a slew of television ad campaigns to promote its network and attract customers after the launch of number portability service across the country. “Global experience shows customers are keen on porting to a service provider offering better network quality, full suite of voice and data products, superior experience and enriched value-added offers,” said Mahesh Prasad, president of Reliance Communications. New telecom players such as Tata DoCoMo have also started campaigns with tags such as “Welcome to the world of freedom, welcome to the world of Tata DoCoMo”. To make it easy for the customers to port into their networks, the operators have also created helpline numbers. These are toll free services created to address the queries of the customers. To avail himself of the service, a customer has to pay a maximum of Rs.19 to the new operator for “porting” the number and remain with the new operator for at least three months. The customer has to send an SMS from the existing phone to 1900. Based on this, a unique porting code will be sent by existing provider. An application then has to be filed with the new service provider mentioning the code for transferring the connection. The maximum waiting period for porting is fixed at seven working days. But the number may remain out of service for just two hours. India currently has over 700 million mobile phone users, making the network the largest in the world after China but ahead of the US. The country has been adding 15-18 million new mobile phone connections to the network every month.

Vice president greets nation on Republic Day Posted: 24 Jan 2011 10:06 PM PST People should remain firm in their commitment towards the founding principles of the Indian republic, justice, liberty, equality and fraternity, Vice President Hamid Ansari said while greeting the nation on Republic Day Wednesday. In his message to the nation, Ansari said: “Since the people of India resolved to constitute India into a republic, we have achieved many successes and have had our moments of glory.” “However, the country has not been able to fully realise the vision of its founding fathers. Millions of our fellow citizens suffer from poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy,” he said. Ansari appealed to the people to remain firm in commitment towards the founding principles of our republic of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity and collectively face the challenges ahead. “My best wishes to all our citizens for peace, progress and prosperity,” he added.

Rajesh Talwar injured after attack outside court Posted: 24 Jan 2011 10:03 PM PST Rajesh Talwar, father of murdered teenager Aarushi Talwar, was Tuesday attacked outside a special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court. Talwar could be seen holding his head in pain as blood flowed out. A sharp-edged cleaver was seen on the ground as television cameras caught details of the assault and security personnel grabbed a young man who had attacked him. Aarushi, 14, was found murdered under mysterious circumstances in her parents’ Jalvayu Vihar apartment in Noida, May 16, 2008. Their domestic help Hemraj was initially suspected for the killing, but his body was found on the flat’s terrace a day later. Rajesh Talwar was arrested soon after the murders but let off when investigators could not find evidence to nail him.

Respect orders of Kashmir government, Chidambaram tells BJP Posted: 24 Jan 2011 09:09 PM PST Home Minister P. Chidambaram Tuesday asked Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders to respect the orders of the Jammu and Kashmir government and call off their planned flag hoisting in Srinagar. “The order of the Jammu and Kashmir government should be respected,” Chidambaram said in a statement, adding that there was no justification for any step that would disturb peace in the state. He said it would be unfortunate if the BJP leaders defied the restrictions by the state government. The BJP has planned a ‘tiranga yatra’ on Republic Day Wednesday to hoist the national flag in Srinagar’s city centre Lal Chowk. Three senior leaders — Arun Jaitley, Sushma Swaraj and Ananth Kumar — were taken into police custody in Jammu Monday night to thwart their plans and taken to Madhopur in Punjab where they were freed.

Playing 40 was the toughest: Priyanka Chopra Posted: 24 Jan 2011 09:05 PM PST From a 21-year-old to a 65-year-old, Priyanka Chopra portrays almost every crucial stage in a woman’s life in her new thriller “7 Saat Khoon Maaf”. But she says stepping into the shoes of a 40-plus character was the toughest as she couldn’t connect to the age group. “The 20s was my age, so it was fine and not so difficult; 30s was something I could expect and somehow imagined. The 50s and 60s were still easier to do because you become a lot more older so your body language is like that. “But the 40s was the middle period, so it was very difficult. You are not very old but you are not very young either. So to get that correctly was a task,” Priyanka, 28, told IANS in an interview. The film, which will be showcased at Berlinale, is the big screen adaptation of Ruskin Bond’s short story “Susannah’s Seven Husbands”. When Vishal Bharadwaj, who had earlier adapted “Blue Umbrella” by the grand old “sahib” from Landour in Mussourie, decided to make a movie on it, the author expanded the few-page short tale into an 80-page novella and then into a 200-page full-length Hindi movie script. “It’s a very entertaining and wicked movie. It’s amusing and not serious. It’s a satire which makes it very interesting,” said the mainstream actress who proved her versatility as a highly ambitious model in issue-based movie “Fashion” and won the National Award for her performance. She was a delight to watch in “Kaminey”. “7 Saat Khoon Maaf” is slated for a Feb 18 release. This is Priyanka’s second film with Bharadwaj after the 2009 release “Kaminey” and the actress has no qualms in saying that the director knows how to exploit her potential. “Vishal has always brought out the best in me and this time too he has given me one of the most challenging parts an actor can get. I’m really grateful that he thought I was capable enough to do it and pull it off,” she said. “There is a lot of responsibility on you when you work with a director like him. He is the kind of person who gives you the scene and says ‘okay, do it now’. No instructions. After I give my first take, he tweeks it a little bit. So the responsibility as an actor is completely on you, which is very scary,” she added. The film’s promos hit the screens some time back and have created enough curiosity thanks to Priyanka’s sinister look and menacing tone. The actress says the role demanded a lot from her. “It was emotionally and physically very draining and I used to take out all my tantrums on Vishal. We used to fight like anything. He used to yell at me and I used to yell back. But then we used to make up,” she said. The former Miss World jumped on to the Bollywood bandwagon in 2003 with “The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy”. In eight years, she has done commercial as well as author-backed sensitive roles too. She is happy that people offer her powerful roles. “The films that come to me are like that. Nobody offers me films where I don’t have a good role. All my films have very power-packed parts for me. I’m grateful that people say that I’m the only one who can do those roles. It’s never been a conscious effort, but obviously if I’m doing a film, I would want a good role in it,” specified Priyanka. The actress will be seen in a different avatar in Anurag Basu’s “Barfee”, which also stars Ranbir Kapoor.

Kate Hudson’s family hoping for daughter Posted: 24 Jan 2011 08:59 PM PST Hollywood actress Kate Hudson’s family is secretly hoping she is expecting a baby girl with Muse frontman Matt Bellamy, according to her stepfather Kurt Russell. The 31-year-old actress who confirmed earlier this month she is pregnant with her first child with current boyfriend Matt Bellamy has delighted her mother Goldie Hawn and stepfather Kurt Russell with the news, but they would be even happier if she gives them a granddaughter, reports people.com. “It’s fun having babies once again. And it’s fun to watch them grow. It’s fun to see what they’re grasping. I think secretly we’re all hoping for a girl,” said Russell. Goldie, 65, admitted she is “excited” about the latest addition to their family. “I’m excited, it’s exciting. You know, we’re just all very happy… happy for them both. What’s more to say?” she said. Kate who has a seven-year-old son Ryder with ex-husband Chris Robinson has been dating the Muse rocker for around nine months.

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